Tag Archive for National Archives

While an additional 19,000 documents were released, some 15,834 documents contained redactions, and another five hundred or more were withheld from the release. The president bought into the national security argument and again extended the time for the removal of all the redactions and final document release to October 2021.

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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump boasted last fall that he would open all remaining John F. Kennedy assassination records. So far, Trump hasn’t made good on the “great transparency” he promised then.

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Of all the fascinating and weird things about the JFK assassination story, the veil of official secrecy that still surrounds the subject a half-century later is one of the most fascinating and weird. Read more

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Stuart Wexler, high school teacher and author of “Killing King: Racial Terrorists, James Earl Ray and the Plot to Assassinate Martin Luther King Jr.,” doubts the president will free the files. Read more

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The JFK Records Act mandates disclosure of virtually all of this material. The view of Judge John Tunheim is that this material can and should be released in full; we concur and share his disappointment that it did not happen by the statutory deadline. President Trump has expressed the view that only the names of living informants should be withheld from released JFK files after April 28, 2018. Our view is that the names of living informants should be disclosed as well, and in any case current withholding is far beyond that limited scope.

In his Oct. 26, 2017 order concerning JFK files, President Trump set a specific time table for the CIA and other agencies that want to keep JFK secrets past April 26, 2018.

Any agency seeking to postpone release of any files must report to U.S. Archivist David Ferriero “on the specific information within particular records that meets the standard for continued postponement” under JFK Records Act, Trump said.

“Thereafter,” Trump went on, “the Archivist shall recommend to me, no later than March 26, 2018, whether the specific information within particular records identified by agencies warrants continued withholding from public disclosure after April 26, 2018.”

As President Trump’s April 26, 2018 deadline for release of the last of the government’s JFK files, Roger Stone, the sartorial dirty trickster of American politics, makes a legally valid point:

The CIA is not obeying the JFK Records Act.

Stone pointed out that the 1992 law which required the JFK documents be released also required the agency redacting records to justify their redactions in writing and that those explanations be published in the Federal Register.

the National Archives today posted 13,213 records subject to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (JFK Act). The majority of the documents released today were released previously in redacted form. The versions released today were prepared by agencies prior to October 26, 2017, and were posted to make the latest versions of the documents available as expeditiously as possible